phr
Bluelighter
Heroin’s Hold on the Young
RICHARD G. JONES
NY Times
1.13.08
HIS heart stopped, twice, but by then Jesse Morella had already choked on his own vomit. It was not until after Jesse was resuscitated a second time that the extent of the damage was known. He could not move his arms or legs. He could not speak. He could not even swallow. He was 16.
Jesse’s injuries horrified his family, but just as upsetting were what doctors said caused them: an overdose of heroin.
“What? Heroin? Just absolute shock,” Jesse’s mother, Maureen, said, recalling her reaction after her son’s heroin overdose in November 2004. “More shock than I can say. People used to say, ‘If you told me to pick 100 kids who would use heroin, I wouldn’t have had him as the 101st.’ ”
But at some point on the night he nearly died, Jesse — who helped teach catechism classes to children, coached a recreation league basketball team and loved few things more than riding his all-terrain vehicle — took what doctors believe was a “hot load,” a batch of heroin mixed with other chemicals, producing a toxic reaction.
For Ms. Morella, there were tears, anger and ultimately an idea. She would do what she could to help other parents avoid the same horrible shock she felt upon learning that heroin, a ghost that hollowed out whole city neighborhoods three decades ago, was materializing again in the suburbs.
Within months, she began organizing lectures at schools — sometimes for children as young as sixth graders — about the dangers of heroin. She would take a slide presentation of photographs of Jesse’s life before heroin. And Jesse — resting in a wheelchair alongside his mother as she lectured — would provide a living example of what came after.
“I hate to use my son as a visual aid,” Ms. Morella, 50, said during a recent interview. “But this is what heroin can do to you. It may not happen to you the first time you try it or the second time, but how much are you willing to risk to party?”
According to medical experts, law enforcement officials and crime statistics, that question has increasing relevance in New Jersey and the other suburbs of New York City, where the authorities say young adults are turning to heroin with alarming frequency.
Last year, the National Drug Intelligence Center, a component of the Justice Department, ranked heroin alongside cocaine as the most serious drug threats in the New York area. Over the last three years, heroin seizures in New York City — a prime entry point to the United States for suppliers from around the world — have more than doubled, to 233 kilograms in 2006 from 114 kilograms in 2004.
While use of illicit drugs over all by 8th, 10th and 12th graders is down in recent years, according to annual surveys by University of Michigan researchers, heroin use has remained steady with just under 1 percent of the students saying they had used it in the past year. And federal officials say heroin use is rising among one crucial demographic: young adults in suburban and rural communities, particularly those in the Northeast.
Other drugs are used by more 8th, 10th and 12th graders nationwide, although use of most drugs, like heroin, has remained fairly constant in recent years after declining early in this decade, according to the Michigan study. It said that of high school seniors surveyed in 2007, 31.7 percent said they used marijuana, 5.2 percent had tried cocaine and 5.2 percent had used OxyContin, one of the few drugs for which use had increased markedly.
Medical experts and law enforcement officials also say that as more young people in the Northeast turn to heroin, more are ending up in jail, hospital emergency rooms or the morgue.
In recent years, emergency room visits across the nation for treatment of those affected by heroin have risen sharply. In 2003, roughly 8 percent of emergency room visits related to illicit drugs involved heroin, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, a federal system that monitors drug-related hospital emergency department visits and drug-related deaths. In 2005, the most recent year for which comprehensive statistics are available, that figure was about 20 percent.
Federal officials say that over the last three years, roughly one of every six drug arrests in the New York area involved heroin. According to a Drug Abuse Warning Network survey, roughly one-fifth of all drug-related deaths in New York and New Jersey involve heroin.
“What you often see in emergency rooms or with the police is often the indication of what’s happening as far as new epidemics are concerned,” said Gilbert J. Botvin, a drug abuse expert at Weill Medical College at Cornell University. “I’ve heard much more concern in some circles about heroin use. The purity of the heroin is much higher than it was before.”
Experts say that more high-quality heroin is being put on the streets of the New York City suburbs than ever before, and at what are considered historically lower prices. Federal officials say that even the smallest amounts of heroin — a 10-gram “deck,” which can cost as little as $7 on the street — are nearly twice as potent in some cities in the region as they were four years ago.
And officials have seen a spike in heroin use among young people nationwide early in the last decade. In 2000, 2.4 percent of high school seniors acknowledged having tried heroin, the highest figures since the mid-1970s, according to the Monitoring the Future survey of drug use conducted annually by researchers at the University of Michigan. Over the last five years, though, heroin use among seniors has held steady at about 1.5 percent.
In the New York area, though, there are indications that teenage use of heroin is more prevalent than elsewhere.
A 2005 study conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4.3 percent of high school students in Connecticut acknowledged using heroin at any time, compared with 2.4 percent nationwide. Officials at the Drug Intelligence Center say that in New Jersey, young adults are using heroin at a rate that is twice the national average.
Federal officials say that the heroin consumed in New Jersey is among the purest in the nation, with levels routinely at 50 percent purity or better. The national average is typically 35 percent to 40 percent, they say.
The authorities attribute the high purity levels to the consistent supply routes between heroin manufacturers from South America, particularly Colombia. These new distribution lines are quicker than the old Asian connections when heroin use was at its peak in the 1970s, and New Jersey is distinctly positioned to receive heroin shipments from overseas.
Two of what federal authorities say are the top 10 entry points for heroin are in or near northern New Jersey — Newark Liberty International Airport and Kennedy International Airport in Queens. Besides those locations, there is the activity at seaports bordering New York City and Philadelphia and the endless stream of car traffic along the New Jersey Turnpike.
“If you’re a drug violator and you had a target, this would be it,” said Douglas S. Collier, a special agent in the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Newark office.
The surge in teenage use of heroin, officials say, has much to do with its increased purity. Because of the drug’s high quality, users can snort heroin rather than inject it intravenously; as a result, young people are more apt to try it.
“There isn’t this stigma of putting a needle in your arm,” said Capt. Bill Straniero, a drug investigator in the Mercer County prosecutor’s office. “These kids say, ‘Oh, how bad could it be?’ ”
The increase in use among young people is underscored by cases like that of Justin Warfield, 18, a student at Rider University, who died of an intravenous dose of heroin in October.
Captain Straniero said that users who began by snorting heroin often graduated to using needles. That is because their bodies become inured to the high from heroin and need the more potent delivery available intravenously. Soon, though, even intravenous doses become ineffective.
“They just keep chasing it and chasing it,” Captain Straniero said. “This one” — heroin — “just grabs you and doesn’t let go.”
Another factor in increased heroin use, officials say, is a bit of generational amnesia about the drug’s harrowing effects. In the 1970s, officials said, the stigma surrounding heroin and its users often was a deterrent.
“Nobody who sees a heroin addict says, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to be,’ ” said Bridget G. Brennan, the narcotics prosecutor for New York City. “But we’re more than a generation removed from the time when people really saw what this drug does up close.”
Around the region, however, the parents of young people whose lives have been consumed by heroin addiction in recent years have taught something of a grim refresher course.
In Connecticut, there is Mary Marcuccio, the mother of a teenage son, who helped found a group, Parents 4 a Change, after three heroin-related deaths in the course of a year in and around her hometown, Southington.
“If these were three kids who were killed by a drunk driver, people would be up in arms,” she said. “But it’s heroin. And nobody wants to talk about heroin.”
In New York, there is Michael Devine, who patrolled the streets of the New York City as a police officer for a decade but worked his toughest case at home on Long Island. He helped lead the authorities to a drug dealer who he believed supplied the heroin that led to a fatal overdose for his 19-year-old son, Joseph.
”No parent,” Mr. Devine said, “should ever have to go through this.”
And in New Jersey, there is Ms. Morella, who endures her sad tour of school auditoriums.
“You know why this happened?” she said, gesturing to Jesse, now 19, who gazed back at her. “Because he never thought that it could.”
Heroin tore a hole through the Morella family on Nov. 10, 2004, when Jesse, who had been out with friends, returned to his Pompton Plains home, complained that he was nauseated and quickly went to bed. It did not occur to Ms. Morella that anything was amiss. After all, Jesse was home by curfew.
But within hours, Jesse, who had been sleeping, started choking on his own vomit. Paramedics were called. At the hospital, the outlook was so grim, Ms. Morella said, “They told us to get a priest because he probably wasn’t going to make it through the night.”
After two weeks in intensive care at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson, Jesse was transferred to Children’s Specialized Hospital, in Mountainside, for intensive rehabilitation.
When he arrived, Jesse was rated at 1 or 2, the lowest marks on an 8-point scale of cognitive ability. Dr. Krishan Yalamanchi, director of the brain injury program at Children’s Specialized Hospital, said Jesse’s brain had been deprived of oxygen, severely damaging the basal ganglia, which, among other things, control movement. After four months of intensive therapy, Jesse could begin tracking movements with his eyes and turning his head toward voices. Today, after nine months of inpatient care and more than a year of multiple outpatient physical therapy sessio
JESSE can turn his head. He can nod in agreement. He can even stretch out his hand to greet a visitor. But his body is still rocked by spasms, and he cannot speak.
“It’s like what a severe Parkinson’s patient would have,” Dr. Yalamanchi said. “It’s like he had a deep stroke in his brain. Those are more or less permanent.”
Once Jesse was home, Ms. Morella started thinking about the lectures. William H. Trusheim, the principal of Pequannock Valley School, which Jesse attended, helped spread the word about them and now helps organize the appearances, which sometimes include Jesse’s brother, Tyler, 18. Jesse’s father, Sal Morella, 48, works behind the scenes, helping to support the effort through his trucking business. So far, the family has given about 50 presentations and has requests for at least that many appearances this year.
Mr. Trusheim said that many in the audiences did not grasp the reach of heroin or its peril.
“People think, ‘My child doesn’t fit the profile,’ ” Mr. Trusheim said. “The thing is: there is no profile with this.”
During a visit at the Pequannock Valley Library, Ms. Morella gently wiped spittle from Jesse’s chin — while Mr. Trusheim held his hand — as she described the mission she has embarked upon, one school at a time.
“Jesse understands what we’re doing,” she said, adding that he has used hand movements and other gestures to indicate he wanted to go along on the appearances.
Then she turned to her son, smiled and said: “Don’t you, buddy? We’re going to save some lives.”
Jesse smiled back and nodded.
Link!
RICHARD G. JONES
NY Times
1.13.08
HIS heart stopped, twice, but by then Jesse Morella had already choked on his own vomit. It was not until after Jesse was resuscitated a second time that the extent of the damage was known. He could not move his arms or legs. He could not speak. He could not even swallow. He was 16.
Jesse’s injuries horrified his family, but just as upsetting were what doctors said caused them: an overdose of heroin.
“What? Heroin? Just absolute shock,” Jesse’s mother, Maureen, said, recalling her reaction after her son’s heroin overdose in November 2004. “More shock than I can say. People used to say, ‘If you told me to pick 100 kids who would use heroin, I wouldn’t have had him as the 101st.’ ”
But at some point on the night he nearly died, Jesse — who helped teach catechism classes to children, coached a recreation league basketball team and loved few things more than riding his all-terrain vehicle — took what doctors believe was a “hot load,” a batch of heroin mixed with other chemicals, producing a toxic reaction.
For Ms. Morella, there were tears, anger and ultimately an idea. She would do what she could to help other parents avoid the same horrible shock she felt upon learning that heroin, a ghost that hollowed out whole city neighborhoods three decades ago, was materializing again in the suburbs.
Within months, she began organizing lectures at schools — sometimes for children as young as sixth graders — about the dangers of heroin. She would take a slide presentation of photographs of Jesse’s life before heroin. And Jesse — resting in a wheelchair alongside his mother as she lectured — would provide a living example of what came after.
“I hate to use my son as a visual aid,” Ms. Morella, 50, said during a recent interview. “But this is what heroin can do to you. It may not happen to you the first time you try it or the second time, but how much are you willing to risk to party?”
According to medical experts, law enforcement officials and crime statistics, that question has increasing relevance in New Jersey and the other suburbs of New York City, where the authorities say young adults are turning to heroin with alarming frequency.
Last year, the National Drug Intelligence Center, a component of the Justice Department, ranked heroin alongside cocaine as the most serious drug threats in the New York area. Over the last three years, heroin seizures in New York City — a prime entry point to the United States for suppliers from around the world — have more than doubled, to 233 kilograms in 2006 from 114 kilograms in 2004.
While use of illicit drugs over all by 8th, 10th and 12th graders is down in recent years, according to annual surveys by University of Michigan researchers, heroin use has remained steady with just under 1 percent of the students saying they had used it in the past year. And federal officials say heroin use is rising among one crucial demographic: young adults in suburban and rural communities, particularly those in the Northeast.
Other drugs are used by more 8th, 10th and 12th graders nationwide, although use of most drugs, like heroin, has remained fairly constant in recent years after declining early in this decade, according to the Michigan study. It said that of high school seniors surveyed in 2007, 31.7 percent said they used marijuana, 5.2 percent had tried cocaine and 5.2 percent had used OxyContin, one of the few drugs for which use had increased markedly.
Medical experts and law enforcement officials also say that as more young people in the Northeast turn to heroin, more are ending up in jail, hospital emergency rooms or the morgue.
In recent years, emergency room visits across the nation for treatment of those affected by heroin have risen sharply. In 2003, roughly 8 percent of emergency room visits related to illicit drugs involved heroin, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, a federal system that monitors drug-related hospital emergency department visits and drug-related deaths. In 2005, the most recent year for which comprehensive statistics are available, that figure was about 20 percent.
Federal officials say that over the last three years, roughly one of every six drug arrests in the New York area involved heroin. According to a Drug Abuse Warning Network survey, roughly one-fifth of all drug-related deaths in New York and New Jersey involve heroin.
“What you often see in emergency rooms or with the police is often the indication of what’s happening as far as new epidemics are concerned,” said Gilbert J. Botvin, a drug abuse expert at Weill Medical College at Cornell University. “I’ve heard much more concern in some circles about heroin use. The purity of the heroin is much higher than it was before.”
Experts say that more high-quality heroin is being put on the streets of the New York City suburbs than ever before, and at what are considered historically lower prices. Federal officials say that even the smallest amounts of heroin — a 10-gram “deck,” which can cost as little as $7 on the street — are nearly twice as potent in some cities in the region as they were four years ago.
And officials have seen a spike in heroin use among young people nationwide early in the last decade. In 2000, 2.4 percent of high school seniors acknowledged having tried heroin, the highest figures since the mid-1970s, according to the Monitoring the Future survey of drug use conducted annually by researchers at the University of Michigan. Over the last five years, though, heroin use among seniors has held steady at about 1.5 percent.
In the New York area, though, there are indications that teenage use of heroin is more prevalent than elsewhere.
A 2005 study conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4.3 percent of high school students in Connecticut acknowledged using heroin at any time, compared with 2.4 percent nationwide. Officials at the Drug Intelligence Center say that in New Jersey, young adults are using heroin at a rate that is twice the national average.
Federal officials say that the heroin consumed in New Jersey is among the purest in the nation, with levels routinely at 50 percent purity or better. The national average is typically 35 percent to 40 percent, they say.
The authorities attribute the high purity levels to the consistent supply routes between heroin manufacturers from South America, particularly Colombia. These new distribution lines are quicker than the old Asian connections when heroin use was at its peak in the 1970s, and New Jersey is distinctly positioned to receive heroin shipments from overseas.
Two of what federal authorities say are the top 10 entry points for heroin are in or near northern New Jersey — Newark Liberty International Airport and Kennedy International Airport in Queens. Besides those locations, there is the activity at seaports bordering New York City and Philadelphia and the endless stream of car traffic along the New Jersey Turnpike.
“If you’re a drug violator and you had a target, this would be it,” said Douglas S. Collier, a special agent in the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Newark office.
The surge in teenage use of heroin, officials say, has much to do with its increased purity. Because of the drug’s high quality, users can snort heroin rather than inject it intravenously; as a result, young people are more apt to try it.
“There isn’t this stigma of putting a needle in your arm,” said Capt. Bill Straniero, a drug investigator in the Mercer County prosecutor’s office. “These kids say, ‘Oh, how bad could it be?’ ”
The increase in use among young people is underscored by cases like that of Justin Warfield, 18, a student at Rider University, who died of an intravenous dose of heroin in October.
Captain Straniero said that users who began by snorting heroin often graduated to using needles. That is because their bodies become inured to the high from heroin and need the more potent delivery available intravenously. Soon, though, even intravenous doses become ineffective.
“They just keep chasing it and chasing it,” Captain Straniero said. “This one” — heroin — “just grabs you and doesn’t let go.”
Another factor in increased heroin use, officials say, is a bit of generational amnesia about the drug’s harrowing effects. In the 1970s, officials said, the stigma surrounding heroin and its users often was a deterrent.
“Nobody who sees a heroin addict says, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to be,’ ” said Bridget G. Brennan, the narcotics prosecutor for New York City. “But we’re more than a generation removed from the time when people really saw what this drug does up close.”
Around the region, however, the parents of young people whose lives have been consumed by heroin addiction in recent years have taught something of a grim refresher course.
In Connecticut, there is Mary Marcuccio, the mother of a teenage son, who helped found a group, Parents 4 a Change, after three heroin-related deaths in the course of a year in and around her hometown, Southington.
“If these were three kids who were killed by a drunk driver, people would be up in arms,” she said. “But it’s heroin. And nobody wants to talk about heroin.”
In New York, there is Michael Devine, who patrolled the streets of the New York City as a police officer for a decade but worked his toughest case at home on Long Island. He helped lead the authorities to a drug dealer who he believed supplied the heroin that led to a fatal overdose for his 19-year-old son, Joseph.
”No parent,” Mr. Devine said, “should ever have to go through this.”
And in New Jersey, there is Ms. Morella, who endures her sad tour of school auditoriums.
“You know why this happened?” she said, gesturing to Jesse, now 19, who gazed back at her. “Because he never thought that it could.”
Heroin tore a hole through the Morella family on Nov. 10, 2004, when Jesse, who had been out with friends, returned to his Pompton Plains home, complained that he was nauseated and quickly went to bed. It did not occur to Ms. Morella that anything was amiss. After all, Jesse was home by curfew.
But within hours, Jesse, who had been sleeping, started choking on his own vomit. Paramedics were called. At the hospital, the outlook was so grim, Ms. Morella said, “They told us to get a priest because he probably wasn’t going to make it through the night.”
After two weeks in intensive care at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson, Jesse was transferred to Children’s Specialized Hospital, in Mountainside, for intensive rehabilitation.
When he arrived, Jesse was rated at 1 or 2, the lowest marks on an 8-point scale of cognitive ability. Dr. Krishan Yalamanchi, director of the brain injury program at Children’s Specialized Hospital, said Jesse’s brain had been deprived of oxygen, severely damaging the basal ganglia, which, among other things, control movement. After four months of intensive therapy, Jesse could begin tracking movements with his eyes and turning his head toward voices. Today, after nine months of inpatient care and more than a year of multiple outpatient physical therapy sessio
JESSE can turn his head. He can nod in agreement. He can even stretch out his hand to greet a visitor. But his body is still rocked by spasms, and he cannot speak.
“It’s like what a severe Parkinson’s patient would have,” Dr. Yalamanchi said. “It’s like he had a deep stroke in his brain. Those are more or less permanent.”
Once Jesse was home, Ms. Morella started thinking about the lectures. William H. Trusheim, the principal of Pequannock Valley School, which Jesse attended, helped spread the word about them and now helps organize the appearances, which sometimes include Jesse’s brother, Tyler, 18. Jesse’s father, Sal Morella, 48, works behind the scenes, helping to support the effort through his trucking business. So far, the family has given about 50 presentations and has requests for at least that many appearances this year.
Mr. Trusheim said that many in the audiences did not grasp the reach of heroin or its peril.
“People think, ‘My child doesn’t fit the profile,’ ” Mr. Trusheim said. “The thing is: there is no profile with this.”
During a visit at the Pequannock Valley Library, Ms. Morella gently wiped spittle from Jesse’s chin — while Mr. Trusheim held his hand — as she described the mission she has embarked upon, one school at a time.
“Jesse understands what we’re doing,” she said, adding that he has used hand movements and other gestures to indicate he wanted to go along on the appearances.
Then she turned to her son, smiled and said: “Don’t you, buddy? We’re going to save some lives.”
Jesse smiled back and nodded.
Link!
Damn yo. that is one of the worst quantity/value/unit sold by estimates i ever seen in my life and bein on this site with all these stupid articles i seen a damn few.
